Music Technology Summative Assesment

H21 Music Technology
Julian Phatarfod | CID: 00595979 Due: Thursday, April 25, 2013. Written Response for Summative Assessment As mentioned in the written in the formative assessment last term, my previous experience with music composition had been very classical and was primarily in the form of me sitting at the piano with a blank sheet of manuscript paper. This is what had originally spurred my interest in a different type of composition, and creating music using technology has proven to be both very interesting but also very demanding, particularly this term. Over the last term I feel that I learned a significant amount of tips, tools and hints with using the software and manipulating sound, which I feel that I have adopted and at least attempted to incorporate into my pieces. I wanted to make sure that the three pieces are varied and draw inspiration from a range of areas, which is why each piece is distinctly different, has different intentions and evokes different moods.
Piece 1 Sinner
Initially, I took on board the feedback given after the formative assessment but still felt that the piece lacked a certain depth and substance, so I made some modifications such as bringing the piano and the beat to the front of the piece and having the orchestral elements enter later. I felt that, overall, the piece sounded too acoustic. Synthesised orchestral elements just dont sound like the real thing and too much made the piece sound like a cheap ringtone. Ive tried to minimise this by using more electronic sounds rather than the sampled instruments and also adding effects using the tools and methods Ive acquired throughout the lectures this term. I couldnt, however, bring myself to dispense of the pizzicato strings, which have remained but in a slightly reduced form and now make up the middle section of the piece. Ive have kept many of the original elements such as the 5/4 meter and the sporadic off-beat percussion such as the clave and triangle which give the piece a slightly unusual rhythm without making it off-putting and unsettling. Originally, my inspiration for this piece was cinematographic music, and how there are numerous composers who remarkable fuse together orchestral and electronic elements in many motion pictures today. I originally made reference to James Bond and my desire to create something dark yet grandiose, however the piece has progressively become melancholy and grey, particularly after introducing the synth lead. It evokes quite a tragic sentiment, perhaps a little foreboding, with a mysterious touch. Id like to think of it as rainy day music, the soundtrack to dull, foggy and overcast morning in London, looking out of a bus as it drives along the river. The title of the piece, Sinner is taken from Nina Simones Sinnerman, where the quick repetitive piano takes inspiration from.
Piece 2 The Boogie Didnt Do It

After the lecture on sampling, and my miraculous discovery of the vocal samples of a number of well-known Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 songs on the
shared Music Technology student drive, I decided to use some of the tracks in my second piece. The group presentations this term also showed me just how much sampling is used in todays music, and both how effective and how ineffective it can be. I realised that lot of the music I listen to, particularly the house and dance music that I would associate with nights on the town, contain samples that have been used to create a remix into a new genre. Its almost hard to find club music which hasnt been sampled from other well-known pieces, particularly 20th century music. Blame it on the Boogie is one of my favourite pieces of all time so I felt like I would take the opportunity to (at least attempt) to use the vocal samples and mix it into a track. Ideally my aim was to create something that I would be happy to listen to on a regular basis. The piece is much more up-beat that the last (even though its meter is actually slower) and has a driving drum line throughout. The main bass as such is using a sample of the opening down-beat of the piece as a loop and modifying it in various ways throughout the track. Twice during the piece the opening bars of the original piece are played in acoustic form, as a quasi-refrain to which I add the new drum line and then break up the beat and re-loop the downbeat. For this piece, I made heavy use of different inserts such as the tone filter, tonic filter and a range of delays to create echoes and change in timbre. So many of the effects I came across were familiar to me from contemporary electronic music (and I suddenly understood where all these kinds of sounds came from) which is why I applied some of them to the piece.
Piece 3 Nirgendwo
The final piece is once again very distinct to the previous pieces, being half as fast, in 3/4 meter and not really having a sense of direction or purpose. It is a piece you can get lost in, a reason as to why the piece is entitled Nirgendwo, the German word for nowhere. I imagine this piece to be like lying in a forest on your back, after a light summer storm, and having the sun shine through the leaves of the trees above. There are sounds of birds and insects, some closer and some further and a distant sound of wind chimes. Ive used a mixture of synthesised elements, such as the high-pitched ringing glass sound and the bell pad, but also orchestral samples such as the strings chords. Often I feel that electronic music lacks a certain tranquillity, and I wanted to bring back a serene feel to the genre with this piece. Its easy to forget that the meter is being held by the three water drops, which somehow get immersed in the ambience throughout the piece but return later at the end: the nature is just how we left it and the piece could essentially start right from the beginning again and continue the tranquil peace. Overall I feel that I have broadened my understanding of music composition, and had a taste of how tracks are produced. I have attempted to apply a range of the techniques I have acquired over the term so far including all the tools required in mastering the track to make the finished product. There are a number of ways in which I think the tracks can improve, although I am very satisfied with them as they are now, and I am very much determined to keep working on music production using similar software in the future!

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H21 Music Technology

Piece 2 The Boogie Didnt Do It

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